The Robots Are Coming!

by Andres Oppenheimer

  “The good news is that technology is making that possible,” Gorder says. “Successful do-it-yourselfers will continue to leverage the latest social media platforms and analytic tools to connect with their fans and fund their projects, partner with product and service companies for branding and advertising campaigns, license their music for film, television, games, ads, etc., leverage relationships with electronic media as part of their marketing strategy, and book and promote their tours and concerts—all with an ultimate goal of getting their music to the ears of the curators of the outlets for consumption,” he adds. To put it succinctly, the vast majority of musicians will have to become small-business entrepreneurs.

  Independent artists/entrepreneurs will also have to learn to use technology to monitor and collect royalties without the need of a record company, promoter, or manager. “Independent artists and songwriters will continue to become more and more conscious of how to leverage their intellectual property into alternate revenue streams,” says Tony van Veen, president of AVL Digital Group. “In addition to the companies that already exist, you will see many new businesses offering affordable services to DIY artists to capture performance royalties, Internet royalties, mechanical royalties, YouTube royalties, sync licensing for film, TV, games, and commercials. Each of these incremental revenue streams may be small, but in the aggregate they will become a needle-moving part of the artist’s revenue mix.”

  Music marketing will also be increasingly automated and will often start with the consumers themselves, said Ira S. Kalb, professor of marketing at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. “People will have bots (or avatars) that are digital representations of them,” he added. “These bot agents will know their music preferences and travel around the Internet buying songs, concert tickets, and related merchandise for their human bosses. It might even get to the point where musicians and record companies will have bots that market their services directly to customer bots,” he predicts. In other words, algorithms for both consumers and artists will be able to communicate with one another, and they will give each of us the music they think we want.

  ATHLETES, LIKE MUSICIANS, WILL BE MORE INDEPENDENT

  Just as growing numbers of musicians are operating independently of the big record labels, athletes will also become increasingly independent from teams and television networks. In many cases, they will become small-business entrepreneurs themselves. A study titled “The Future of Sports” by Delaware North, a company that operates in the sporting and entertainment industries, predicts that Google, Facebook, and other social networks will increasingly invest in the sports industry, buying the rights to broadcast events and showing them on YouTube or other websites. Audiences for sporting events will be migrating from TV and radio to streaming, the same way they did with music and television miniseries. This will allow athletes to earn more from their speeches, endorsements, and merchandising outside the sports tournaments in which they participate. At the same time, growing numbers of individual athletes and entire teams will be creating their own mass media.

  “Major networks become increasingly boxed out as leagues, franchises, players, and even fans themselves become popular content providers. Following the lead of Manchester United, sports franchises become their own media outlets, creating their own broadcast, radio, and online channels. Athletes increasingly step up to form their own media outlets….Why would an athlete reveal news in an interview, when they can break news on their own media property?” the Delaware North study says.

  The practice of having coaches give a press conference after a game could soon be a thing of the past and replaced by players’ statements given through their own media outlets or through shared media with other colleagues. The Players’ Tribune, which was created in 2014 by former baseball star Derek Jeter and which received $40 million in investment during a second round of fund-raising in 2017, has become many athletes’ favorite site, and several of its columnists feel it’s the best place for publicizing personal news or expressing opinions without having to deal with intermediaries who might inject their own comments into the conversation. According to its website, The Players’ Tribune defines itself as “a new media company that provides athletes with a platform to connect directly with their fans, in their own words.”

  WILL CRISTIANO RONALDO AND LIONEL MESSI HAVE THEIR OWN NETWORKS?

  When soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo announced to the world in late 2017 the name of the daughter he was expecting with his partner, Georgina Rodriguez, he didn’t do it in an interview with a journalist. Instead, he posted a live video on his Instagram account, revealing that his daughter would be named Alana Martina and that he had picked her first name and his girlfriend chose the second. After making the announcement, and visibly moved, Ronaldo took several questions from the Instagram audience. That’s just an example of how sports stars are—sometimes without even realizing it—creating their own media.

  Basketball champ Kobe Bryant had already done something similar in 2015 when he announced his retirement. He didn’t do it in a TV interview or through a press release, but in a letter to The Players’ Tribune, thereby skipping the traditional news media. Another NBA star, Kevin Durant, did the same when he announced that he had accepted an offer to play for the Golden State Warriors. Since it began, nearly five hundred athletes from twenty-four different sports have written articles or recorded videos for The Players’ Tribune. And just as athletes want to reach their fans without intermediaries, many fans also prefer to hear directly from their favorite players. As Jasneel Chaddha, a sports analyst for the Huffington Post, pointed out, “The authenticity of this ‘direct touch’ allows fans to get closer to the people they follow religiously and perhaps even idolize.”

  The success of The Players’ Tribune has led several sports stars to set up their own media outlets. The NBA’s LeBron James created the website Uninterrupted, where athletes can post their own videos and talk about whatever they want. Former tennis champ Andre Agassi and his investors launched Unscriptd, which—as the spelling of its name suggests—has a more rebellious air to it, and which allows for more daring content. How long will it take before every star is using his or her own social network as the one exclusive channel for his or her own statements? Most of them already have more followers than any traditional media outlet.

  Soccer stars Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Neymar have respectively more than 122 million, 89 million, and 60 million Facebook followers, to whom they can promote their own brands for free. Why should they continue giving exclusive interviews to traditional media that profit from them? It’s entirely likely that many sports journalists currently working for newspapers or TV networks will become content providers for the media outlets of famous players in all sports.

  LIVE SPORTING EVENTS WILL CONTINUE TO GROW

  Live streaming will make sporting events more accessible, and 3-D screens and virtual reality headsets will allow us to experience them more closely. Thanks to virtual reality, we’ll be able to change the way we see a soccer match from the perspective of the referee to that of a striker or defender. Still, though, the number of fans who attend live events at stadiums is likely to continue to grow. “The world of video and connectivity is not threatening the stadium experience,” says Chris White, former vice president of Cisco Sports and Entertainment Solutions Group. “Look at the way that jumbo screens have been embraced outside of venues—think Wimbledon or the World Cup. We are still human beings and we still yearn for human interaction. There is nothing more uplifting than being in a positive crowd environment with a bunch of people having fun roaring for a team.”

  Industry analysts are already forecasting arenas that seat 250,000 people and are integrated into city centers. Thanks to new construction materials and the use of carbon fiber modules, these stadiums will be multiuse facilities. And with self-driving cars able to take people to the event and then park them
selves outside the downtown areas, stadiums will take up less space and be located in much more central locations. Increasingly, they will become giant social gathering places. At TD Garden, home to the NHL’s Boston Bruins, an app is already available to LinkedIn members that lets them know which of their professional contacts happen to be at the arena. “The entire sporting complex—not just the seats at the game—will become an attraction,” the study predicts. “Many more fans will come into the complex, and while not everyone has a seat, all will have a front-row experience.”

  SPORTS BARS WITH 360-DEGREE SCREENS ON THE WALLS

  Meanwhile, there will be venues outside sports stadiums where people will use new technologies to watch games. They will be futuristic versions of today’s sports bars and will pioneer many new technologies, such as the 360-degree TV screen. According to the Delaware North study, history shows that some of the biggest innovations in the entertainment world—such as cinema, video games, IMAX, and 3-D—were not launched at people’s homes or in stadiums, but at other public places. That trend may continue, it suggests.

  The sports bars of the future—which the study calls the “third venue” after the stadium and the home—will be a popular option not only because people will have more time to watch sports events but also because the prices of tickets to the games will continue rising. Going to a live sports event may be beyond the reach of much of the population. A bar with a 360-degree TV screen will be a great substitute for those who want a more exciting experience than watching a game on their laptop or on a virtual reality device in the privacy of their home. And these sports bars of the future may become family attractions, much in the way that Las Vegas hotels transformed themselves from adult entertainment places into family vacation destinations.

  FANS WON’T JUST BE SPECTATORS ANYMORE

  The explosion of social media is turning fans, who were once merely spectators at sporting events, into active participants in the decisions made by their favorite teams. Whether it’s signing players or creating salary cap space, there are more and more cases in which the fans are changing the minds of once all-powerful team owners and managers. Fans sent a powerful message to the owners of Italy’s Lazio soccer team when after sharing their frustration on social media, they boycotted a match against Atalanta following Lazio president Claudio Lotito’s decision to sell Brazilian player Anderson Hernanes. Lazio was able to sell only about 2,000 tickets at the 82,000-seat stadium for the match. Since then, soccer club owners in Italy have become more conscious about the growing power of their fan base.

  “The emerging generation of fans—armed with powerful media devices and always-on connectivity, and social media platforms with massive reach—have started to take control of the conversation, effectively becoming a major media entity in their own right,” the Delaware North study finds. “Teams, leagues, and sponsors who fail to respond to activist fan movements risk major damage to ticket sales and brand equity.” And in the coming years, fans may have an even greater influence on club decisions, since algorithms will be able to predict fan reactions and club authorities take such forecasts very seriously, the study predicts.

  THERE WILL BE A NEW MARKET FOR EMERGING SPORTS

  In addition to the new venues and technologies to watch sports events, the scope of professional sports will be greatly expanded. Until now the global sports industry was limited to a relatively small number of sports. People paid to watch American football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, cricket, tennis, or golf. But all that is changing rapidly with the arrival of emerging sports such as various forms of skating, extreme sports like triathlons, parachuting, and bungee jumping, and the so-called e-sports, or video game competitions.

  Many emerging sports that were already gaining an audience thanks to cable television, like surfing and skateboarding, will be further enhanced by the broadcasting of new competitions on YouTube and other Internet platforms. Dozens of new sports will emerge over the next two decades, including several that will use exoskeletons, prosthetics, and rocket packs, the Delaware North study says. Professional football or basketball games, which draw the biggest TV audiences, will now have to compete with online tournaments in which we and our friends will be the stars of the show, competing with others in walking, running, or biking contests.

  Thanks to sports-oriented social media platforms such as Strava.com, anyone who engages in outdoor activities can already link his smartphone to the Internet and compare his results with those of other people of a similar age and physical condition anywhere in the world. If amateur joggers or cyclists, for instance, go to a track in their hometown, they can compare their times with the times of others who have used the same track in the past. These platforms are becoming giant databases that allow us to be part of all sorts of competitions, making them more participatory and attractive for many people. If the Internet is already letting us know who is the fastest cyclist on our favorite local route, how long will it be before corporations start sponsoring the top performers, drawing more viewers into our microcircuit competition? As sportswear companies increasingly focus their advertising on their most likely customers—instead of anonymous masses watching football games on TV—they will start to mine the data collected by these websites to target, for instance, weekend bikers. After that, how long will it take for companies to start sponsoring your top neighborhood cyclist? In fact, it’s already happening, and it will become increasingly common.

  THE RISE OF EXTREME SPORTS

  Skateboarding, surfing, and ice and rock climbing will debut as new official sports at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The British Parachute Association reported that the number of jumps in the United Kingdom rose from 39,000 in 2006 to nearly 60,000 in 2016, and the British Mountaineering Council reported that its membership has grown from 25,000 in 2000 to roughly 55,000 today. And BASE jumping—parachuting or wingsuit flying from cliffs or mountains—is gaining in popularity as well, despite several deaths that made international headlines in recent years.

  Sponsors are starting to flock to extreme sports. In 2016, Red Bull, the energy drink company, partnered with the sports camera company GoPro to jointly produce and promote some of these sports events. Now mountaineers, wingsuit fliers, and fans of any extreme sport can upload point-of-view footage of themselves to the Internet platforms of GoPro Channel and Red Bull TV. As Red Bull founder and CEO Dietrich Mateschitz said, the partnership between his company and GoPro “will expand not only our collective international reach but also our ability to fascinate people.”

  THE E-SPORTS PHENOMENON

  Digital gaming competitions, also known as e-sports, which were previously confined to the bedrooms of teenagers, are now starting to fill stadiums. Tickets to the 2015 Dota 2 international gaming tournament, which was held in the 17,000-seat KeyArena in Seattle, sold out in just twenty-four minutes, and prize money totaled more than $18 million. According to a report by The Seattle Times, the competition—which was broadcast on ESPN—was watched by over twenty million fans. A year earlier, the League of Legends 4 video game championship, held in South Korea, filled the 40,000-seat Seoul World Cup Stadium. Video game players are becoming world-famous stars, though many of us wouldn’t recognize their names. As advertisers discover and begin sponsoring them, these stars will find themselves on the same stage as professional football, baseball, or basketball stars.

  Many young people across the globe have grown up idolizing e-sports champions like Lee “Faker” Sang-Hyeok from South Korea or Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martínez of Spain, and millions of other kids are now following the next generation of video game stars. For many youths, “the biggest sports upset story in recent memory is not Leicester City FC taking the Premier League title—it’s CDEC Gaming taking $2.8 million at the International 2015 Dota 2 Championship,” the Delaware North study says. It’s no coincidence that Amazon spent $970 million to buy Twitch, the online channel that broadcasts video game competitions. James Mc
Quivey, author of the book Digital Disruption, writes that “it’s no longer just wanting to see how someone defeated the boss on Level 5. It’s having that social experience and the comradeship of fellow gamers.”

  GYMS WILL BECOME COLLECTIVE EXERCISE CENTERS

  The gyms of the future won’t be places where people go to exercise individually. Instead of being filled with people training on their own, watching TV while they jog on a treadmill, gyms will become places where we’ll be doing team exercises or even competing with one another. Forty-two percent of the U.S. health club market’s facilities have already been modified to attract people who practice group exercises like yoga, Pilates, jiujitsu, dance, Zumba, indoor climbing, and CrossFit. Gyms specializing in particular group activities such as CrossFit and yoga have been growing at a rate of 450 percent a year since 2010. The number of activity-specific health clubs could soon surpass that of traditional multipurpose gyms, industry analysts say. Yoga classes—including the sale of clothing, mats, and other products and supplies—are generating $27 billion in annual sales just in the United States.

  And with new technology like smartwatches that monitor our movements, group classes and competitive exercises at gyms will become increasingly popular. “Alt-athletes have little interest in sitting in the stands and rooting for a traditional professional sports team. They don’t want to watch—they want to play,” the study, “The Future of Sports,” says. “They are the fastest-growing market—76% of all regular exercisers are millennials—with a thirst for new products and technological advances that help them reach that next goal.” To put it another way, Zumba teachers and martial arts instructors won’t be going hungry anytime soon.